"If you're running newer hardware, there are some definite advantages to installing a 64-bit operating system. But, if you still need to run any 32-bit applications, you'll need to have the 32-bit support libraries installed. Different Linux distros handle this in different ways. For 64-bit Ubuntu, finding the proper 32-bit support packages is a simple matter of opening up the Synaptic Package Manager, and searching for the string 'ia32'. With 64-bit openSuSE, 32-bit support is already built-in, so you don't have to do anything. With Fedora, though, it's a whole different story. Not only are the 32-bit packages not already installed, the Fedora folk don't provide any documentation on how to install them. The directions I found via Google were outdated, and wouldn't work. I finally resolved the problem by sking a Red Hat employee in my local Linux Users Group."